According to news reports this week, automobile sales have risen to extreme levels. This jump in new car sales is primarily due to a newly structured finance deal that has been working well to bring sales up and make auto maker happy.

Auto manufacturers nearly across the board reported strong April sales gains in the United States, powered by the continued rise in sales of pickup trucks and crossover sport utility vehicles.

The industry sold 1.45 million vehicles last month, up 4.6 percent from a year ago, according to Autodata. The seasonally adjusted annual rate rose to 16.5 million, up 450,000 from April 2014.

General Motors, the nation’s biggest automaker, posted a 6 percent increase last month compared with the previous year. It was its best month for crossover vehicle sales, which were up 25 percent companywide.

Ford also had its best month for S.U.V. sales. The shift by Americans away from cars has been striking. April was the 20th consecutive month that trucks and S.U.V.s outsold cars in the United States, according to Jessica Caldwell, senior analyst at Edmunds.com.

The rise of compact and subcompact S.U.V.s, which compete in price with traditional midsize sedans, has opened up sport utilities to consumers who previously could not afford them. Small S.U.V.s — like the forerunner Buick Encore, with sales up 29 percent in April for a 16th consecutive month of gains — are attracting not only those who are downsizing from larger vehicles, but especially drivers of smaller cars.

“A lot of people thought it would have an effect on larger S.U.V.s, but it’s actually having the strongest effect on small and midsize cars,” Ms. Caldwell said.

Dave Winslow, vice president for digital strategy at Dealertrack, said traffic at online car sites indicated a curious trend: Shoppers who research small cars, and even see them in person, are increasingly deciding on compact S.U.V.s when they actually get to a showroom.

“You may start off looking for a Camry and when you get there, come across a compact S.U.V. and decide to move up,” Mr. Winslow said. “They find out they can get a better value.”

Indeed, the typical small S.U.V. may cost only a few hundred dollars more than a comparable car. And gas mileage is increasingly competitive as well.

However, with this increase in auto sales and auto loans there will absolutely be a massive increase in auto repossessions as well. It’s just like corporate to think about the now and worry about the defaults of such loans later. This will be unavoidable especially with the sketchy economy and part time job conversions from full time jobs and or ending careers due to increasing regulations in almost every industry nationwide and world wide in many cases.

Come on Santander, repossession 101. Never take active military cars? Either the bank hired agents that had no knowledge of the law but they were in fact cheap. Or Santander felt they were above the law and for that they will pay dearly. They could have allowed the debtors to keep each car for less than the nearly 9 and a half million they lost in court.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Auto lender Santander Consumer USA has agreed to pay $9.4 million to settle charges that it violated military members’ rights when it repossessed their cars, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

The Service Members Civil Relief Act cuts some slack to members of the military who signed consumer contracts before they joined the service or were called up for active duty. Under the act, lenders can’t repossess a military member’s car without a court review, if the service member took out the loan and made a payment before going on active duty.

The Department of Justice said Santander didn’t seek the required court review before it repossessed 760 cars. In addition, the DOJ said, Santander tried to collect repossession fees after it purchased the loans on 352 previously repossessed cars.

Service members whose cars were repossessed by Santander will receive $10,000 plus any lost equity. Santander will pay $5,000 each to those whose cars were wrongly repossessed before it bought their loans.

The Justice Department said the settlement is the largest it has received in an SCRA repossession case.

The Department of Justice said it began investigating after the Army’s Legal Assistance Program referred a repossession case. Justice discovered that Santander also had used an arbitration clause in its contract to keep a service member from filing a class action suit against it.

In the future, Santander will be required to check the Department of Defense’s database to see if a military member is on active duty before it tries to repossess a car.

The Justice Department investigated illegal repossessions between January 2008 and February 2013. The settlement requires Santander to review its files to identify any wrongful repossessions after February 2013.

Service members eligible for restitution will be contacted by the settlement administrator, the Department of Justice said.

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